Why I’m no longer looking for love – by Jan Leeming


For four decades, Jan Leeming has been a familiar and much-loved figure on the small screen in Britain. Now living in Deal, Jan discloses her close family ties with the county as well as why she’ll never marry again…


Hers was a face everyone knew, a voice of trusted authority to deliver the news of world events.


Calm and assured, professional, immaculately dressed with barely a hair out of place, Jan Leeming was as familiar as her female contemporaries Sue Lawley, Angela Rippon and Carol Barnes.


The wedding of Charles and Diana, the


Falklands War, the rise of Gorbachev’s Russia, the IRA’s mainland bombing campaign and the killing of Indira Ghandi all happened during her seven– year stint in front of the BBC cameras.


That she bowed out of television news


broadcasting in 1987 has done little to diminish her profile or popularity in the interim, having kept herself busy with many different projects along the way.


6 Mid Kent Living


Now aged 75 – divorced and single — Jan is also a very well-known face in Kent, having lent support to many good causes and worthwhile events.


But one can be forgiven for thinking that she was a little off the radar until 2006 when she re-emerged as a plucky I’m a Celebrity (Get Me Out of Here!) contender on ITV, but much more recently for BBC’s Bafta-nominated smash-hit series The Real Marigold Hotel.


Celebrities were whisked off to India to


discover the complexities of that country’s culture and society and to learn a little more of themselves. For Jan, it was also an odyssey to her father’s birthplace and where he had served in the Indian Army.


Jan’s chequered love life — five marriages — is what led her to Kent 20 years ago, when she met and fell for Chris Russell, a local head teacher.


She married him not long after her marriage to a Red Arrows pilot Eric Steenson ended in 1995.


The marriage to Chris lasted only a


short while and she admits she became isolated from her large friendship group in her “much-loved Buckinghamshire”. Now, she sadly reflects, those friends she made locally are dying, causing that circle to become “smaller and smaller” as time passes.


Jan, who has a 36 year-old son, said: “I made a rebound marriage and when that fell apart I did not have the finances to return to my much-loved


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